Life Is Tough Enough
by Waldo
Summary: There was no good way to casually ask a girl about her menstrual cycle. So walking up to Kara and casually asking, “Hey, had your period lately?” was definitely out.


**Title**: Life Is Tough Enough  
**Author**: Waldo  
**Rating**: R  
**Disclaimer**: Making no money, therefor I have permission  
**Summary**: There was no good way to casually ask a girl about her menstrual cycle. So walking up to Kara and casually asking, "Hey, had your period lately?" was definitely out.  
**Notes**: lilyvalley73 is my beta reader and hero. This was originally written for the LJ community "Bad Cliche" and the cliche I was given to work from was: "Oopsies, I forgot to take my birth control!"

**Life is Tough Enough**

_As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes. _ Mel Brooks

_Just because you make mistakes doesn't mean you are one. _Author Unknown

Lee shook his head at all that had happened in the space of three weeks. Kara'd jumped for Caprica; he'd staged a failed mutiny; the colonel had staged a successful coup. His father had been shot; Boomer'd been outed as a Cylon; Baltar, Tyrol, Callie, Crashdown and the others had been stranded on Caprica.

And by the graces of the gods, everything had worked out somehow. Kara had come back, bringing Helo and the pregnant Cylon back with her. He'd been given an incredibly light sentence for his crime due to the simple fact that the _Galactica_ couldn't get by without him. The colonel had completed his coup and in the wake of the commander's injuries, had declared martial law. His father was recovering much better than a man of his age should have been and the people on Kobol had been rescued. In Lee's opinion, the crash had done even more damage to Dr.-Vice-President Baltar's head as he was acting even more insane than usual.

So it wasn't that much of a surprise that when he'd seen Kara for the first time that he'd dragged her into what the groundcrew called "the groping closet" and had shown her exactly how glad he was to have her back.

Part of him regretted it. It wasn't the kind of wine-and-dine moment he'd wanted for her, but then again, she'd probably have rolled her eyes at the gesture – or worse laughed - so maybe there wasn't a lot lost there after all. The tension had been building between them for so long that it was going to come to a head one way or another. Actually in their case it came to a head one way and then another. The fight in the hangar bay had been prelude.

The sex in the closet had been frenzied but fabulous.

It had been a week ago that Lee had stopped by sickbay on his way to yet another briefing. It had let him get one name crossed of his list at least. Most of the pilots had avoided their monthly exam and gotten away with it given all the insanity of the last few weeks. But now that things seemed to have reached a new version of 'normal' at least for a while, Cottle was back to sending out his 'delinquent' lists.

Starbuck, of course, Helo, Racetrack, Nightmare and Muse had all managed to skip out on their monthly physical. He was reasonably sure that Starbuck would excuse herself (and probably Helo) by saying that Cottle had poked and prodded and tested and scanned them both nearly to death when they'd gotten back from Caprica three weeks ago. But Cottle was back on his normal schedule and he expected everyone to present themselves.

He'd skipped out too. Only going when he did because he didn't like the hypocrisy of telling his pilots to get their asses down there if he hadn't done so himself.

So he let Cottle poke and prod and left his requisite samples and headed down to the briefing room.

He hadn't expected to be called back down the next day.

Doc Cottle had Lee come back into his private office, which made Lee nervous as hell.

He opened a folder and studied it for a minute. "There was something odd in your bloodwork from yesterday," the doc said, still looking in the folder. "You have some odd hormone levels. My first thought was that it looked like you were on T3H and your most recent shot was wearing off. But you've never mentioned being on T3H."

Lee flushed to his collar. Back at the academy and while on the Atlantia he'd been regular as clockwork getting his shots. A ten-minute doctor's appointment every three months was nowhere near the inconvenience of an accidental child.

But since coming to the _Galactica_ he'd had so much on his mind that…

"Oh shit."

Doc Cottle glanced up. "Should I take that to mean that you _were_ on the shots?"

Lee dragged a hand down his face. "Can you tell from that," he indicated the chart, "how long ago the last one lost its… effectiveness?"

"Not without some kind of baseline. Could be three weeks ago, could have been yesterday." Cottle tilted his head, "Something I should know about?"

Lee's head dropped back. "Gods, I hope not."

She was going to kill him. Absolutely going to kill him. He lay on his bunk, ostensibly reading, but he didn't even know the title of the novel in front of him. What would the odds be? That she'd be in the right place in her cycle that _one time_ three weeks ago?

He scrubbed at his face. When he'd been fourteen his father had given him 'the lecture' and made it very clear that it 'only takes one time'.

It had only been one time. Well, okay, twice, but within the space of half an hour, so that really counted as 'once' right?

And there was no good way to casually ask a girl about her menstrual cycle. For all that the fleet had become completely equal when it came to all things male and female, the men in the group had tended to learn very quickly that when the girls of their unit were cycling, it was best to just stay clear. So walking up to Kara and casually asking, "Hey, had your period lately?" was definitely out.

He tossed the book on his shelf and flipped over on to his stomach. The real clincher here was that if Kara did turn up pregnant, it would mean that she wasn't taking her shots either. And if the good Doctor Baltar wasn't on T3H… There would need to be actual DNA tests to determine the father.

_Frak it_, Lee thought. If Kara was going to have a baby he'd cop to it regardless. He couldn't imagine – didn't want to imagine – her trying to raise a child with that crackpot. He couldn't imagine her raising a child at all, truth be told, let alone with that crackpot.

He tried to imagine Kara with a kid. Seeing her with a baby wasn't so hard. Feed it, change it, give it toys, let it sleep… pretty routine. When that kid became a toddler…when the 'why's started and the 'I wants' started, it would be a whole new test of her patience. And Kara was notorious for her lack of patience.

Well… if she were pregnant, she'd have nine months of sitting on the sidelines to hone that particular skill.

"Oh shit!"

The realization came upon him so suddenly he actually swore aloud.

"Sir?" Crashdown called up from his bunk. "Captain Apollo, sir? Everything alright?"

"Fine," Lee answered quickly. "Just remembered something. No big deal."

It wasn't a quite a lie, but he wasn't sure it was a casual enough truth to get Crashdown to back off. He lay on his bunk counting to ten slowly as he waited to see if he'd be pressed.

Kara _would_ kill him. Kara had once, very late at night, when they'd had not quite enough ambrosia to excuse or forget the discussion, told him about her own mother. The mother who had made it very clear from very early on that Kara had been a mistake. Kara had told him about how her mother had lost her own wings when she'd gotten pregnant and that she hadn't had the courage to defy her own parents and get an abortion. It was the first time he'd seen Kara cry, as she explained how often her mother told her that she should have had the abortion because a child was good for nothing but destroying careers and getting in the way and costing money. She'd shown him the scar on her hand from where her mother had held it against the stove and the ones on her back from the belt buckle.

And she'd told him in no uncertain terms that she would never, in her life, become a mother. She wouldn't risk losing her wings and she wouldn't trust herself not to eventually turn into her own mother.

Lee had just held her and told her that the choice was hers and that if she was more comfortable not being a parent then that was definitely the right path for her. It had seemed pretty simple back then.

She'd been so adamant. So she'd be taking shots of her own, right? Unless she forgot too. No, Doc Cottle'd been her doctor for two years. And he'd gotten her records when she transferred up from flight school. Ultimately, she was the one with the most to loose. He had to believe that she'd be more responsible than… well, than he had been.

But then again 'Responsible' and "Starbuck' had never seemed to go well together in the same sentence before. He wondered why he should assume they would now.

The morning made Lee feel slightly better about the predicament he might be facing, but not much. Breakfast didn't sound like a good idea, his stomach was starting to do that thing it did when he got nervous, and he had CAP that morning. He couldn't think of anything worse than throwing up in his own helmet.

Kara was up and had gone running by the time he swung his legs down and made a move for the showers. He had just opened his locker to pull out his tanks and briefs when she came jogging in.

"Hey lazy-ass. I've been jogging and had breakfast already. I was starting to wonder if I was going to be flying alone this morning, too."

Lee forced himself to smile at her. "You can't very well be my wingman if I'm not out there taking point," he teased.

"Um… right… except that part about _me_ being _your_ wingman." She pulled open her locker, "Eat my vapors, _Captain_ Apollo." She swung back to her locker, kicking her running shoes in without untying them.

Apollo had a smart remark coming when he saw her suddenly reach up and steady herself on the locker door.

"Whoa."

"You okay?" He dropped his clothes on the table and rushed around it to her side. Her arm was cold and clammy where he held it. "Kara?"

"Little dizzy. I'm okay," she responded automatically. "Actually, no, I take that back." She sprinted for the head.

The door to the head clanged against the opposite wall and Lee could hear her retching from where he stood. "Um… Kara?" It couldn't be morning sickness. Could it? When did that start? Lee's head swam. It _couldn't_ be morning sickness.

When she didn't answer he moved cautiously behind her. She was still kneeling and spitting and occasionally dry heaving. Lee knelt behind her, holding her head up with one hand and pulling her hair back behind her ear with the other. "Easy," he whispered gently as she tried to stand.

She stopped trying to stand and leaned back against him, panting. "Okay, that sucked. Where the hell did that come from? I was _fine_ this morning when I got up."

Lee had no idea what to say. He was sure she didn't want to hear his idea. "Sit here, I'm going to get you a wet cloth for your face," he said instead.

He leaned past her to flush the toilet and then settled her against the stall wall. "Stay there," he warned when he realized how pale she still was.

He grabbed a towel from the pile near the sink and ran the cold tap over one end. Kara had her knees up against her chest, her elbows between them, her hands over her face when he returned. As much as he wanted to, he didn't coddle her any more than he had. He didn't want her to start yelling about him treating her as fragile and then wondering why he would do that. "Here," he said handing her the towel.

"Thanks," she said pulling the towel down and scrubbing her face.

"How do you feel now?" Lee asked as she hung her head again.

"Kind of lousy, thanks," she snapped. "I just barfed up my breakfast for no discernable reason, Lee, how do you think I feel?"

"You've probably been better," he replied, suitably chagrinned. "Here, I'll help you back to your rack and then get someone to take your shift."

"I can fly. It's passing. I can fly."

Lee rolled his eyes. Kara would insist she could fly if she'd had both arms cut off. He remembered the thought he'd had that led to him skipping breakfast. "You want to puke in your helmet?"

Kara looked up at him, wrinkling her nose, but not saying anything.

Lee reached a hand down and helped her to her feet. "I'll be willing to write it off as a one-day bug if you feel better for the rest of the day. If you're okay tonight, you can fly tomorrow. If you're too sick to eat and hold down your dinner, you'll go to the doc. Got it?"

Lee shook his head as he realized that he actually hoped that she'd be feeling lousy later. Being sick only in the morning made him think of things he didn't want to contemplate too hard.

He put out his hand to help her back to bed. "Come on, back to bed for –"

His sentence was cut off as Hotdog came crashing through the door to the head, ran into the next stall and began heaving.

After the worst of it seemed to pass, Lee ventured, "Costanza?"

"Sorry sir. I don't think I'm going to make the CAP this morning. I'm not feeling so well." He began heaving again.

Lee looked from him to Kara and back again. Clearly Hotdog wasn't morning sick. "What the hell's going on?"

Kara and Lee could hear Hotdog slump to the floor. "Well, sir, I'm not exactly sure." Hotdog paused to flush. "But I think I heard that some of the deckcrew who started their morning shift before most of the morning CAP came on were sick too. There's a rumor that there was something contaminated in breakfast this morning."

Lee stifled a sigh of relief. Contaminated food was no small problem in a fleet with so few supplies, but it did explain Kara's immediate problem. It didn't let him off the hook entirely, but seemed to give him a small reprieve.

"What'd you eat this morning, Kara?" Lee asked.

"What's passing for scrambled eggs and toast. Nothing new."

"It's the jelly," Hotdog called from where he was still sitting in the john. "Someone said they were making jelly out of the fruit they found on that cargo ship. Trying to make it last longer. Not such a good idea, apparently," he said as he began vomiting again.

"Alright, both of you report to Doc Cottle. I'll find out who we need to replace on the CAPs for today."

Hoping this was the sole cause of Kara's discomfort, or that Doc Cottle would run his usually ninety-thousand tests and put him out of his misery one way or another, Lee left to see what kind of damage a little bit of jelly was doing to his rosters.

Nearly twenty percent of the _Galactica's_ crew was down for almost three days with botulism. Lee had gotten almost no sleep in that entire time. Between having to restructure the rosters to accommodate those who couldn't be more than a few meters away from the head for more than ten minutes at a time and worrying about what might be going on with Kara, he couldn't slow his brain enough for real sleep.

He was starting to have flashbacks to the first five days after the war when life was lived in thirty-three minute stretches between Cylon fights.

Kara was back on CAP the third day after her food poisoning episode. Lee had put her on mids so that she could sleep in. He flew the morning patrol and was just coming back in as she was getting ready to go out.

"Feeling alright?" he asked as he pulled himself out of his flightsuit.

"Fine. Though I'm starting to think I'm… I don't know holding water or gaining weight or something. I feel like I'm all swollen up." Kara zipped her suit up, tugging at it to get it to sit better.

"You look fine," Lee said.

"You look like hell," Kara countered. "Have you slept in the past month?"

"I've had a few things to do around here with a chunk of our pilots shot down by globs of strawberry jelly." He didn't tell her what else was preying on his mind. He knew he couldn't keep his concerns to himself forever, but he just couldn't find a way to waltz up to someone who could put him in a body cast when seriously pissed and say, "So… I may have knocked you up."

Kara tugged on her flight suit again. "I think those pills the doc has us taking is making us swell up," she complained again. "Even my breasts seem bigger than they were last week." She pulled on the straps of her bra and tanks lifting them up and letting them fall again.

Lee bit his lip, but couldn't help laughing. The things that girl would say out loud.

He made a show of checking her out. "They look the same to me."

"Put your eyes back in your head, flyboy," she quipped as she finished zipping up her flight suit.

She left the bunkroom, still muttering about how tight her flightsuit was.

"Hey Starbuck! Pyramid game starting in ten minutes in the rec room."

Kara spun around to holler after Crashdown's jogging form. "Let me change and I'm there!"

The CAP had been wonderfully boring, which had given Kara time to grouse about her flightsuit not fitting some more and now she was more than anxious to get out of the damn thing.

She got back to her locker and pulled out a pair of BDU pants and set of clean tanks. She threw the annoying gold suit into her locker, figuring she'd give it a few days before actually went to the quartermaster and had the damn thing altered. Maybe it was the meds. Maybe she was having some kind of weird delayed radiation reaction.

She tugged her pants up over her underwear and discovered, only somewhat to her surprise, that she couldn't get them to button. "Dammit!" She slammed her hand into her locker.

Apollo looked up from where he was doing paperwork at the center table. "Problem?"

"Yes." Kara stated succinctly. "I am, apparently, getting fat. I thought it was just my flightsuit, but now I can't get my damn pants to button."

_No, no no nononono_, Lee thought to himself. "Maybe you need to lay off those cookies Callie keeps breaking into the galley to make."

Kara raised an eyebrow. "You know about that? Mr. I-have-the-regs-tattooed-on-my-ass knows about someone breaking into an area she doesn't belong in and using up fleet supplies without permission and hasn't either thrown her in the brig or had a stroke?"

Lee grinned and closed up his folder. "I don't have the regs tattooed on my ass. As you well know." He was rewarded with a slight coloring of her cheeks. Starbuck didn't do 'blushing', but on occasion, he could find just the right thing to say to make her pink up a little. "And Callie and I have come to an understanding. I get three from the first batch while they're still warm."

Kara turned around and openly stared at him. She couldn't imagine him being a part of the cookie conspiracy.

"Besides, a few contraband cookies tend to be good for morale." He decided to ask a loaded question. "Don't you ever get cravings for anything?"

"Yeah, Lee," she said, rolling her eyes. "Pickles and ice cream. What the hell? We're lucky we get 3 meals a day. I don't know how long we're going to make the food rations we've got last. I'm not going to get all worked up about a few things I want and can't have. In a few weeks someone's going to have to start explaining to kids on those civilian ships why we're cutting back to two meals a day and then one. And what do you do with the ones who are too young to understand that we just don't have any food for them?"

Lee blinked, wondering where that speech had come from. "You okay?"

Kara shucked the too-tight pants and pulled on a pair of sweats. "Fine. I had security check on the _Hera's Star_ last week and a couple of the kids there thought that because I was with the fleet that I'd be passing out candy. Turned out they were from Sagitaron and had been around after the last terrorist attacks – courtesy of that sociopath Zarek – and the fleet troops that were sent in had candy to try and ease the kids' fears, get the kids to trust the soldiers. How do you explain to a kid that there's essentially no candy left in the frakking universe and isn't likely to be any more any time soon?"

Lee moved to stand behind her, resting his hand on her shoulders. "You didn't tell me about that when you got back."

Kara shrugged. "Honestly, I didn't even think about when I got back – we were busy setting up that fuel exchange and getting a crew together to find their atmosphere leak." She forced a smile. "Maybe I'll get Callie to send them some cookies the next time she breaks into the galley." Kara physically shook herself, so Lee took a step back. "Sorry. Since I got sick the other day, I've been having the damnedest mood swings."

Lee pushed again. "PMS?"

Kara slammed her locker shut. "Just for that, I'm not going to go easy on you at Pyramid tonight. Don't bring anything you aren't prepared to lose."

Lee scowled at her completely unhelpful answer.

As they both turned to head for the rec room, Racetrack came in with a stack of clothes in her hands. "Starbuck! Good, I caught you."

"What's up?"

"Did you send a bag of stuff to the laundry recently?"

"Yeah, I got it back the day before yesterday, why?"

Racetrack held up the pile of BDUs, flightsuits and blues. "They gave me yours. I'm hoping you got mine and it's not going to be one of those things where I have yours, and you have Muse's and she has… you know?"

Kara looked over the other woman carefully. Racetrack was almost her height, but where Starbuck tended to be muscular, Racetrack was rail thin. "Thank the gods!" Kara yelled, turning around to grab the discarded flightsuit and BDUs and actually bothered to check the tags. "I was starting to think, you know… that I was gaining weight or something." Kara went through the rest of the things in her locker handing over what didn't belong to her. "Sorry I didn't check… They gave this stuff back to me between puking sessions the day before yesterday.

Racetrack made a face. "Yeah, how's that going? Feeling better?"

"Yeah. Now that I know I'm not actually swelling up like a Picon puff-up fish. You comin' to the card game?"

Racetrack took her laundry and headed back for the hatch. "'Fraid not. I have mids tonight." She stuck her tongue out at Lee.

Lee just grinned in response. Another possible disaster, possibly averted.

The card game was well under way when Helo showed up.

"Where you been hiding, Helo?" Kara hollered out as she tossed twenty cubits into the small pile on the table.

"Flightdeck. Chief owed me a favor." He set small thermos and a half dozen shot glasses down on the table.

"Whoot!" Starbuck hollered. "Booze. Pass it around!"

Lee panicked. If she was, in fact, pregnant, she shouldn't be drinking. Helo had put a glass in front of each person at the table and was filling it with the deckcrew's rock-gut.

"There's only enough for one for each of us, but what's a card game without a little hooch?" Helo tipped the last few drops of moonshine into his mouth, shaking the thermos, just in case some was stuck to the bottom.

As everyone toasted Helo and lifted their glasses, Lee realized he was out of time to come up with something subtle. He reached awkwardly for the cards in front of Kara, and 'accidentally' jostled her hard enough to spill it down the front of her shirt.

"Frak! Lee! Frak it all to hell! What the frak was that?"

Helo snickered. "Think you could get 'frak' in there a few more times."

"Shut up," she told him flatly, but that was all the time she spared him. "What the hell?"

"Sorry?" Lee tried.

"Frak. Now I have to go change. You know, you've been a complete freakshow this week," she told her best friend before gathering up her winnings and stalking off.

Lee hoped to everything holy that this damn issue got resolved one way or another soon, because soon enough she was going either kill him and hide the body where it would take them years to find it or she would just quit talking to him altogether. And that wasn't his goal either. He sighed. He needed to find a way to talk to her.

"Deal me out," he told the table. Before he left, he slammed his own shot, knowing he'd need it for either courage, or to dull the pain her fists were going to deliver in short order.

Her tanks were drying on the back of a chair in their quarters when he got there, but she was gone. He checked the rec room and the head and a few of her other favorite haunts before deciding that if she was taking pains this great to hide, he probably didn't want to find her after all.

The next morning, Lee was awoken by the sound of Lieutenant Gaeta paging him to CIC. He rolled over and looked at the time. Not terribly early, but as he was flying the evening shift, he'd wanted to take the chance to sleep in while he could. He glanced over, Kara was sound asleep on her bunk. He breathed a sigh of relief. Ever since that night she hadn't come home after the Colonial Day party, and then the seemingly endless stretch of time she'd been on Caprica, he found himself getting this irrational rush of relief every morning he woke up to find that she was where she belonged.

He rolled out of bed and into his blues and went up to CIC to see what couldn't wait a few hours for him to report in himself at the beginning of his shift.

He took the confidential file and tossed it on the table. "Starbuck. Starbuck! Wake up." He shook her shoulder. "Get up, Kara, come on."

"If this ship isn't under attack, I'm going to beat the crap out of you," she muttered into her pillow.

Lee sat down on the edge of her bed. "The commander wants you to do him a favor."

Kara opened one eye, and Lee smiled. He knew that invoking his father's name would get him much further than making it an order.

"What's he want?" she muttered.

"Classified. Get up, get into your flight suit and report to the flight deck. I'll tell you down there."

Kara rolled her eyes, but rolled out of her rack.

"Where'd you disappear to last night, anyway?" Lee asked as she staggered to his locker.

"On my way back to change – thank you again, very frakking much, by the way, my first drink in a month and I end up bathing in it – anyway, on my way back to change, I ran into Callie. We made a midnight galley run."

"Hey! She didn't bring me my cookies!"

"I told her you that you'd probably damage someone with them if she did. Then I ate them."

Kara was a little more than half awake when she reached the flightdeck. "So what's this super secret mission?"

Lee led her over to the Raptor the crew was fueling and prepping for launch. Kara kept glancing back to her Viper where it was stowed along the wall. "What the hell, Lee? A Raptor?"

"We need someone to transfer someone to Cloud Nine."

"Someone?" Kara repeated caustically.

"Pres – Ms. Roslyn. They don't want her sent back to Colonial One, they think that'll send the wrong message to the fleet, but holding her in a prison cell isn't making things better either. So they all agreed she'd go to Cloud Nine for now."

Kara stiffened, not sure she really wanted to spend an hour in a shuttle with someone who'd been branded a traitor and almost gotten her branded one as well.

"You don't have to talk to her. But maybe the two of you have some stuff to say to each other… I don't know." Lee took a deep breath. He almost added that he did need to talk to her, but chickened out at the last minute. She was going to get what amounted to a day of R-and-R and he didn't want to ruin it by putting the infamous, "We need to talk" in her head before she left.

"The commander says that if you behave yourself over there, you can stay on Cloud Nine for the rest of the day. Eat some real food. Walk under the fake sun…"

Kara beamed at him. "Sounds good." She turned to climb up into the Raptor and then turned back. "I need to run back to my locker for a second if I'm going to be gone all day."

Lee squinted at her. "Kara, you need to get going, the Marines are going to bring her in any second, we're doing this early to avoid a big audience. Tell you what, tell me what you need, and I'll get it for you while you run your pre-flight."

"I'll be back in just a minute." She tried to shoulder past him.

"Starbuck, come on, we need to get this show on the road. What do you need? I'll run down to your locker and-"

Kara stood toe to toe with him. "I really don't think you want to do this for me, Lee. Trust me on this one. I appreciate the gesture, really, I do. But I need to go get this."

She tried to get past him again, but he grabbed her arm and hollered, "What the hell is such a big deal? Just tell me what you-"

"Oh for frak's sake, Apollo! Do you really want to go and get me a couple of tampons from my locker!"

The entire deck fell instantly quiet.

Lee blushed to his collar. "Um… no… guess you were right. But uh… ahem… hurry back." He stepped out of her way.

And collapsed on the wing of her Raptor, breathing a huge sigh of relief.

_Life is tough enough without having someone kick you from the inside._ Rita Rudner


End file.
